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Phonetic spelling

Mishearing is an important source of eggcorns. Simple misspellings are not eggcorns, of course, although they can be interesting and transparent. The following were collected in a few days of listening closely to pronunciations from around the world on BBC World Service.

[Q] I want to ask… Which do you find more effective… Air chokes or blood chokes?
[A] We set in a large circle faceing outward. He went around behind us and applied an air type blockage until we tapped out(usually when ones vision started to narrow). After a break, he did the same thing with a carroted artory neck choke. The tap outs were much, much quicker with that technique.Survivalist parlour trick

Re: Phonetic spelling

burred, you’re a font of fun stuff.

Off the top of my head, I can remember that, when I worked in mental health, I and others were confused about “extrapyramidal symptoms” versus “extraparametal symptoms”. I know there are other examples of phonetic misspelling I’ve encountered, but can’t bring them to mind right now.

Re: Phonetic spelling

Oh, I just remembered this one: Some years ago I was conversing with a British woman and she used the word “Chooda”. I said “What?”, and she repeated it a couple of times, but I still couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say. Finally, she spelled it out for me: “T – U – D – O – R”! Someone needs to teach these Brits to speak English ;^D

Re: Phonetic spelling

Re: Phonetic spelling

I don’t think I’ve told the story that’s similar to Dixon’s “Chooda” story. When I was a corporate trainer, I would sometimes receive calls from companies offering to sell us training classes. One woman was asking me various questions about our set-up, and she asked, “Are there any treaches that you attend regularly?” Naturally, I asked her to repeat the question, and she did, exactly as before. I asked for another repetition, and received the question again, with absolutely no attempt to speak more clearly. Finally, I had to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not understanding the word ‘treaches’. Could you spell that for me, please?” She replied, “T-R-A-D-E S-H-O-W-S”. In three repetitions, she didn’t once make it sound anything like two words. It was “treaches” all three times.

Re: Phonetic spelling

To my ear though, chooda sounds no worse than toodrr, and besides I’m used to hearing tunes as choons, tuna as choona, a tutor as choota and a tuba, or tuber, as chooba. I’ve even heard chrain for train.
My non-rhotic Welsh friends would probably point out that Tudor should be pronounced more like Tidda, with that last vowel a short schwa.

Re: Phonetic spelling

Peter Forster wrote:

To my ear though, chooda sounds no worse than toodrr, and besides I’m used to hearing tunes as choons, tuna as choona, a tutor as choota and a tuba, or tuber, as chooba. I’ve even heard chrain for train.
My non-rhotic Welsh friends would probably point out that Tudor should be pronounced more like Tidda, with that last vowel a short schwa.

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh!

So apparently in England there’s considerable danger that one might attempt to cook and eat a tuba or play music on a tuber, since they’re indistinguishable ;^P

Re: Phonetic spelling

Watching Olympic tennis on Saturday, I was puzzled to hear that a new term was being used for a tied game, a term which I heard as “gin”, where I thought it should be “deuce”. Listening very closely I discovered I’d got it wrong, it wasn’t the Queen Mum’s favourite drink that was being proclaimed, it was “juice”.

Re: Phonetic spelling

And so, while the fab crowd stayed at the fabulous resorts where they rested and dined well and then whooped it up by night, lesser souls were having a juice of a time, just finding a rhythm, and luvs, this made for a lot of miserable would-be revellers. Jamaica Gleaner social notes